1940 - The Tripartite Pact is signed by Germany,
Italy, and Japan in Berlin

1954 - "Tonight Starring Steve Allen"
debuts on NBC - the show would later come to be known as "The Tonight
Show", whose subsequent hosts would include Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, Conan
O'Brien, and Jimmy Fallon

1956 - USAF Captain Milburn G. Apt dies shortly
after exceeding Mach 3 in the Bell X-2 craft when the craft goes out of control

1959 - Typhoon Vera strikes Japan, killing five
thousand people

1961 - Sierra Leone joins the United Nations

1965 - Silent film star Clara Bow passes away at
the age of 60

1968 - "Hair" opens at the Shaftesbury
Theatre in London and would host nearly 2,000 performances over the next five
years

2000 - The first Olympic medal for tae kwon do
was won by Michail Mourutsos during the Sydney Games

2001 - Fourteen people are killed and four more
injured when a man goes on a shooting rampage in Zug, Switzerland; the gunman
would later take his own life

2008 - P!nk's "So What" reaches #1 on
the Billboard Charts

2015 - The television series "CSI: Crime
Scene Investigation" airs its final episode after a fifteen year run on
CBS

And while she is NOT the subject of today's blog, her birthday happens to be
today's Tuesday Timeline date. September 27, 1996.

But
what in the world happened on September 27, 1996 in pop culture? Well, at the time, I was fifteen years old
so I do remember that day well. Aside
from the birth of my niece, there was something else that I was looking forward
to.

It
was the debut of a television show that as I mentioned before was quite magical
in a way. And considering that
Halloween is coming up next month, I figure that now is a good time to bring up
the fact that this television show was filled with magic and witchcraft, and
its storylines often left the viewers feeling spellbound.

It's
a television show that was based on a comic book character that debuted in
Archie Comics in 1962, and while this character once had her own cartoon show
in the 1960s and 1970s, this television series was the first time that the
character had been seen in live action - well, aside from the introductory made
for television film that aired earlier in 1996.

Yes,
it was twenty years ago today that "Sabrina: The Teenage Witch"
debuted on ABC! Twenty years! My goodness, I feel old just thinking about
it!

And, yes...I will definitely admit to watching this show - well, at least for
the first couple of seasons anyway.
What was interesting about this show's run was that it ended up running
for seven seasons total - but on two different networks. From 1996-2000, the show was part of ABC's
TGIF line-up, but beginning in 2000, the show switched to the WB Network for
the remainder of its run. The final
episode of the series aired on April 24, 2003.

Mind
you, by April 2003, Sabrina wasn't a teenager any longer. Neither was Melissa Joan Hart who played the
role of Sabrina (she was 20 when the show began). But yet somehow, I think that Melissa Joan Hart was a good choice
for the role. After all, the Sabrina
comic book series (at least the one that was illustrated by Dan DeCarlo) showed
Sabrina as being a positive, caring, happy-go-lucky character. And certainly Melissa was capable of playing
such a role. Heck, she was the star of "Clarissa
Explains It All" way back in the mid-1990s!

And
I have to say that for the most part, the show stuck with the formula that
worked in the comic book series. Rather
than having Sabrina living in Riverdale with Archie, Betty, and Veronica, she
lived in the fictional community of Westbridge, Massachusetts. And the reason for why she has magical
powers is because her father's side of the family come from a long line of
witches and warlocks, dating back to the Salem Witch Trials period.

Sabrina
discovers her magical powers on the morning of her sixteenth birthday when she
finds herself levitating over her bed.
And after talking with her two aunts, Hilda (Caroline Rhea) and Zelda
(Beth Broderick), she comes to accept the fact that she can now cast
spells. She also comes to learn that
the family pet, a cat named Salem (Nick Bakay) can talk. In reality, Salem was once a powerful
warlock who had a spell put on him that transformed him into a cat because his
power got the better of him.

TRIVIA: Beginning
in 1996, all Sabrina comics that featured Salem changed his colour from orange to
black to fit the television show better.

Of
course, Sabrina had more to worry about than trying to control her powers - the
first three seasons of this show clearly showed that she COULDN'T. She also had to balance her witch life from
her normal life, and when you're a high school student, that's not exactly easy
to do. It's especially hard when you're
falling in love with your crush, Harvey Kinkle (Nate Richert), but you're
competing against Libby Chessler (Jenna Leigh Green) for his attention, that's
definitely not a good feeling.

And certainly on Sabrina's first day of knowing that she's a witch, she never
expected to get so angry with Libby that she accidentally transforms her into a
pineapple in front of the whole school!
Fortunately, Hilda and Zelda come up with a plan to restore Libby back
to normal while never revealing Sabrina's secret. It's quite complicated to explain, but the pilot episode is where
it all happened.

Now,
over the course of the show, characters came and went. Melissa Joan Hart and Nick Bakay were the
only ones to stay for the whole series.
Caroline Rhea left the series to host her own talk show, with Beth
Broderick following suit. Nate Richert
came and went. And new cast members
joined the show at various points including Martin Mull (Mr. Kraft), Soleil
Moon Frye (Roxy), Elisa Donovan (Morgan), David Lascher (Josh), and Dylan Neal
(Aaron). And when the show switched
from ABC to the WB, it was also a turning point for Sabrina as she left high
school and started attending college.
But, that's really all I can say as I haven't seen too many episodes of
the last three seasons of the show. You
had to pay the cable company extra to get the WB, and it just wasn't worth the
money. Which I suppose is why the WB is
now known as the CW.

I
have to say that overall the show did stay true to the comics - well, the first
few years anyway. And while the show
was never really destined to win any Emmy Awards, you do have to admit that it
was a show that could appeal to all audiences with its family friendly
storylines and magical whimsy. Consider
it a 1990s version of "Bewitched" if you will...only Sabrina never
had to wiggle her nose to cast a spell.

Besides, the television show launched a comic
book reboot, a series of youth novels, a cartoon series, and even a few video
games! And at the time it was airing on
TGIF, it was the highest rated series in the block - and this was during a time
in which "Boy Meets World", "Family Matters" and "The
Hughleys" were airing alongside the show.
That's quite impressive, no matter what your feelings were about the
show.

Personally, I liked it a lot. But then
again, I like almost anything associated with Archie Comics. I wonder if the "Riverdale" series
that is set to air on the CW in early 2017 will have the same success as
Sabrina did, given that it seems to be wanting to go after a completely
different audience. Who knows, really?